Food is one of the fundamental ingredients of life. We cannot go a day without it before experiencing discomfort and the kinds of food we eat and how we eat them are closely intertwined with our cultural practices, physical environments and personal health. Nonetheless, we have been cooking progressively less.

While digital media has transformed every facet of society, the fundamental technologies we encounter in the kitchen today provide only incremental improvements to the tools we have been using for hundreds of years. In order to bring our cooking technologies to the digital age, we have developed several prototypes and concept designs that combine digital fabrication technologies and food.

Each design addresses a fundamental process that lies at the heart of cooking, namely the mixing of ingredients; the physical and chemical transformation of these ingredients into new compounds; and finally their modeling into aesthetically pleasing and delectable textures and shapes. Our hope is that these concepts and prototypes will provide a glimpse at the new aesthetic and cultural possibilities, which can be brought forth by a new, digital gastronomy.

Amit Zoran and Marcelo Coelho. “Cornucopia: The Concept of Digital Gastronomy.” in Leonardo: Journal of the International Society for the Arts, Sciences and Technology. Volume 44, Number 5, October 2011, pp. 425-431, . [PDF]